Content Management System (CMS) Overview.

A content management system (CMS) is software that assists in the organization and presentation of content on a websites.

A CMS is made up on two applications:• Content management application – allow administrator to create content. • Content delivery application – present in a viewable way on the web site.

Primary goals of a Content Management System (CMS) ate to:• Identify users, their roles, and access levels on the site • Organize content into different sections and categories for ease-of-reuse • Create and define simple workflow’s for content creation and deployment • Control versions of content • Deploy design templates to give a more interesting look-and-feel to a published site. • Provide advanced tools for adjusting site functionality.

Before make a decision to builds site with or without CMS you need to answer some of the following questions:

• How big of a site do you need? • Does you system need to be scalable? • Do you need something to work right of the box, or are you willing to work on the system for a while to set it up? • What type on information will you be presenting on your site? • Will there be only one administrator for the site, or will they be spread around the world? • Do you need varying levels of access for your site or will it be open to all users? • Are you willing to spend money on the system or would a free, open source solution be better for you?

Drupal – Overview

Drupal is often described as a “content management system” (CMS) it is also a “content management framework”. In other words, unlike a typical CMS, it is geared more towards configurability and customization. Picture a range of measurement where the one end of the scale is labeled “specific” and the other end “abstract”. On the “specific” end of the spectrum, you would have something whose form is very specialized because it’s meant for a specific purpose – like, say, a hammer. On the other end of the spectrum, you would have something much more abstracted, that is available to be configured any way you like, for a variety of purposes – like some wood and a chunk of steel. You could make a hammer, or any number of other things with the wood and steel.Drupal’s purpose is to sit in the sweet spot between the two ends of the scale, and create a sort of “builder’s kit” made up of pre-designed components that can be used as-is or can be extensively reconfigured to suit your needs. Its design provides incredible flexibility while still allowing people who aren’t programmers to make powerful websites. This principle of manageable abstraction is important to understand, because it is a central concept to all things Drupal. When you understand why a measured amount of abstraction is valuable, you’ll begin to understand why this approach is such a strong argument for using Drupal. (from www.drupal.org)

Drupal Features

Collaborative Book – Drupal’s unique collaborative book feature lets you setup a “book” and then authorize other individuals to contribute contentFriendly URLs – Drupal uses Apache’s mod_rewrite to enable customizable URLs that are both user and search engine friendly.Modules – The Drupal community has contributed many modules which provide functionality that extend Drupal core.Online help – Like many Open Source projects, we can’t say that our online help is perfect but have built a robust online help system built into the core help text. Available to you on your own siteOpen source – The source code of Drupal is freely available under the terms of the GNU General Public License 2 (GPL). Unlike proprietary blogging or content management systems, Drupal’s feature set is fully available to extend or customize as neededPersonalization – A robust personalization environment is at the core of Drupal. Both the content and the presentation can be individualized based on user-defined preferences. Role based permission system – Drupal administrators don’t have to tediously setup permissions for each user. Instead, they assign permissions to roles and then group like users into a role group.screenshotSearching – All content in Drupal is fully indexed and searchable at all times if you take advantage of the built in search module. (find out more: www.drupal.org)

* Full standards compliance — We have gone to great lengths to make sure every bit of WordPress generated code is in full compliance with the standards of the W3C. This is important not only for interoperability with today’s browser but also for forward compatibility with the tools of the next generation. Your web site is a beautiful thing, and you should demand nothing less. * No rebuilding — Changes you make to your templates or entries are reflected immediately on your site, with no need for regenerating static pages. * WordPress Pages — Pages allow you to manage non-blog content easily, so for example you could have a static “About” page that you manage through WordPress. For an idea of how powerful this is, the entire WordPress.org site could be run off WordPress alone. (We don’t for technical mirroring reasons.) * WordPress Links — Links allows you to create, maintain, and update any number of blogrolls through your administration interface. This is much faster than calling an external blogroll manager. * WordPress Themes — WordPress comes with a full theme system which makes designing everything from the simplest blog to the most complicated webzine a piece of cake, and you can even have multiple themes with totally different looks that you switch with a single click. Have a new design every day. * Cross-blog communication tools— WordPress fully supports both the Trackback and Pingback standards, and we are committed to supporting future standards as they develop. * Comments — Visitors to your site can leave comments on individual entries, and through Trackback or Pingback can comment on their own site. You can enable or disable comments on a per-post basis. * Spam protection — Out of the box WordPress comes with very robust tools such as an integrated blacklist and open proxy checker to manage and eliminate comment spam on your blog, and there is also a rich array of plugins that can take this functionality a step further. * Full user registration — WordPress has a built-in user registration system that (if you choose) can allow people to register and maintain profiles and leave authenticated comments on your blog. You can optionally close comments for non-registered users. There are also plugins that hide posts from lower level users. (find out more:www.wordpress.com

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